Greifenstein, page 319 by Francis Marion Crawford
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d I will be Cousin Hilda to you.'
'Thank you,' said Rex.
He wondered why he had ever disliked her, and he even asked himself whether the antipathy he had felt had been real or imaginary. From that time, however, his manner changed and Greif had no further cause of complaint.
The weeks sped on quickly, and the wedding-day came at last. Everything was done very quietly indeed, as was natural and right, considering that the year of mourning had not yet expired. Only when all was over, Greif made a great feast for all the men of the Greifenstein estates, and another in the court of Sigmundskron for the people of the tiny village. And it was to Sigmundskron that Hilda and Greif went first, while Rex and the baroness remained together at Greifenstein. There was as yet no outward change in Hilda's home, though a few rooms had been furnished for the newly-married pair. But the old sitting-room was left as it was for the present, and there Greif and Hilda dined together on the first evening, while the peasants were feasting beneath the window, in the August moonlight.
Many a long year had passed in melancholy silence since such merriment had been heard within those grey walls, and the people felt instinctively that a new era had begun for them, that there would be life in the old place again, and that the young lord would build up Sigmundskron to be what it had been before. Though not a foot of land remained to the name outside the ramparts, the feudal tradition had not disappeared. Old men were alive whose fathers had told them of the good old Sigmundskrons, how they had been brave in war and kind in peace, and generous till all was gone, and the voices of these drowned the ill-natured remarks of the few who said that the baroness was a miser and had hoarded her gold these twenty years in the deep vault under the haunted north-west tower, upon the brink of the precipice. Moreover, as is the nature of peasants, the sight of the feast warmed their hearts towards those who gave it, even before th